Enacting cultural diversity through multicultural radio in Australia

Australia is second only to Israel in being the world’s most culturally diverse nation, based largely on high levels of immigration in the second part of the 20th century. From the 1970s onwards, Australia formally recognized the massive social changes brought about by postwar immigration, and provided legislation to incorporate cultural diversity into everyday lives. One such ‘legislative’ enactment saw the establishment of multicultural broadcasting in Australia, as arguably a world-first, both in its comprehensiveness and diversity. Today, Australia has a public sector corporation, the Special Broadcasting Service, administering five radio services in 68 languages. Also, the Community Radio sector produces multicultural programming in 100 languages through a number of its 330 broadcast and 207 narrowcast stations. This article examines the relationship between radio and its communities. It argues that despite the ‘profile’ of SBS television, radio is much closer to its constituent communities, and therefore plays a greater role in enabling those communities to speak their own histories, beyond the confines of a consensual Anglophile paradigm

The journalism industry award, arbitration and the universities

Australian journalists are continuing their push to become a 'real' profession; and they are looking to universities to help them. The journalists' union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, is about to take a proposal to the Industry Commission which will disentangle recruitment anomalies. Cadet recruitment will be distinct from graduate recruitment; journalism graduates will go in a year ahead of other graduates. it is uncertain whether this interest in universities stems from a genuine concern to make the 'profession' better, or whether it is just 'badge engineering'

Journalism, corporatism, democracy

The corporatising of journalists has been an issue in the United States for most of the current decade. Journalists find themselves increasingly drawn into the commercial strategies of their employers. Indeed, the role of the editor is increasingly also one of publisher. News value is as much a question of how to pursue and capture audience demographics and psychographics as it is about servicing the general democratic needs of citizens. Similar trends and concerns are evident in Australia. The question is whether this constitutes some kind of crisis for democracy or an evolving communication industry. What is certain is that the work of journalists increasingly needs to be analysed in terms of the 'communications industry' as a whole. It is Windschuttle's failure to any longer look at the industry as a whole, and to insist that journalism is some kind of scientifically pure practice, which leads off this discussion of the corporatisation of journalists

Mainland Torres Strait Islander songwriters and the 'magical islands' of the Torres Strait songs as identity narratives

Islands are not only physical places; they can also be metaphorical spaces for connecting with cultural and social origins, especially for diasporic populations separated by time, place and situation from their origins (Hall, 1990). In some cases, they may become 'magical islands' - that is, more imagined than real, more idealized than objectively examined. To quote E. M. Forster (1936: 48): 'In the heart ofeach man there is contrived, by desperate devices, a magical island.' Music is one means of artistic expression that can help construct such magical, metaphorical spaces